AN UNCERTAIN GESTURE

There may be summers and other shadows

before her lungs come back, before someone knows

and can tell us why, when we were not there,

a slow leak began and she lost her genius.

Neither neighbor nor stranger can know the day.

It has been translated into too many languages

so that, upon our profession of doubt,

its light, even this moment, departs the sky.

Tell us why, when we return to anything,

there is no chance for dialogue or entrance.

The day's perishings permit only the weakest holds.

I stand and billow. I stand and invent backward.

appeared in Zone 3, Volume IX, No. 1